Where work sits in the chart
A career reading sounds like one straight answer. In fact astrology spreads the subject of work over several places of the birth chart, and those places answer very different questions. Anyone who knows which of them they are asking gets a usable answer; anyone who asks everything at once gets mush. This page therefore shows not the technique but the map.
The line between above and below
Two points belong together and are nevertheless almost always treated separately. The midheaven, the MC for short, lies where the zodiac crosses the noon line of the place of birth at the moment of birth – the line the Sun passes over every day around midday. Directly opposite, deep beneath that place, lies the imum coeli.
The tradition reads this line as a relation between public life and origin. Above stands what can be seen of you: role, title, what people who do not know you know you for. Below stands the ground: family, home, retreat, the end of things. That the two lie on one straight line is no whim of the draughtsman but a claim: how far up you get has something to do with what you stand on. In most house systems the MC is also the cusp of the tenth house; in the whole sign system it can fall into the ninth or the eleventh instead.
The tenth house: being seen
The tenth house is the area of standing: office, position, reputation, the judgement of people who judge you from a distance. This is where the commonest confusion of the whole field sits, because the tenth house is not your working day. It describes what of your work reaches the outside, and that can be very little. Two people with the same hours are not seen alike.
The sixth house: the hours themselves
The working day sits elsewhere, in the sixth house. What recurs belongs there: tools, arrangements, colleagues, journeys, the body that has to last out the afternoon. In the older tradition this house was called the bad fortune and stood for toil, service and infirmity. That sounds grim and has a sober core: here work appears as effort, not as achievement.
For most people it is decided right here whether a profession holds up. People put up with an astonishing amount as long as the hours themselves are bearable, and astonishingly little when they are not – no matter how good the job looks on paper.
The second house: what is left of it
Earnings and possessions belong to the second house. What is meant is not money in general, but what comes in by one's own hand and stays there; inheritance, dowry or a shared purse fall to the eighth house. The distinction is practical: a chart can show a strong disposition for visibility and a thin one for savings. There are plenty of such people, known in the trade and short at the end of the month.
The eleventh house: who holds the door open for you
The least noticed of these areas is at the same time the one through which most paths in working life run. In the older tradition the eleventh house was called the good spirit, and it stands for friends, advocates, alliances and hopes. Posts are seldom filled on the best reference, but because someone thinks of you at the right moment.
Why success is not a single value
Four places, four measures: standing in the tenth, bearable hours in the sixth, earnings in the second, backing in the eleventh house. Anyone who calls someone successful in their work almost always means one of the four and says nothing about the other three. Hence the experience many people carry around with them: arrived on paper and in a bad mood all the same.
The question before the reading
Before you have anything calculated, decide which of the four questions is yours. Do you want to become more visible, to have better days, to earn more – or is it a network of people that you lack? Four intentions, four different next steps. A birth chart can show which of these regions is built up in your case; about salaries and vacancies it says nothing at all. The forces that appear in the four regions have a page of their own: the planets. And anyone who wants to see what else is read besides the question of work can browse the horoscopes.